


Sugar and Spices and Explosive Devices

by Aris Merquoni (ArisTGD)



Category: D.E.B.S. (2004)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Yuletide, Yuletide 2008, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:Moebius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-08 20:52:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/79413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArisTGD/pseuds/Aris%20Merquoni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>That's what little international diamond thieves are made of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sugar and Spices and Explosive Devices

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moebius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moebius/gifts).



> A giant shout-out and thank you to Livia, without whom not only would this story have been unbetaed, but nonexistent.

When Lucinda Reynolds was five years old, her favorite possession was a bright pink pistol which fired real (if tiny) tranquilizer darts and her father was despairing of controlling her.

"Lucy," he said, plonking her down in a chair in their hotel room and gently redirecting the tip of her gun so she fired into the credenza, "darling, we're going to have to get you a minion to look after you."

Lucy pouted. "I don't want a minion!" she said, inferring from this statement that a minion was something like a nursemaid. This was both more and less true than she realized.

"Oh, but minions are wonderful to have," her father said. "They keep track of your important paperwork, they carry out your orders, and they help to keep you out of trouble." As though this had reminded him of something, he raised his head slightly. "Bernice, how is the repli-bot doing?"

"Mostly well," her father's second-in-command said, lifting one side of her headphones off her ear in order to communicate better. "Some of the cues the AI is picking up on are... a little strange, but I think we'll get through the summit."

Lucy didn't think too hard about whether Bernice was a minion or not. Bernice, and the rest of her father's staff, were more like an extended family of aunts and uncles, and their business was too important for them to explain in terms a five-year-old could follow. Lucy wanted to understand--rather, she wanted to be involved in the important business, because it got everyone very excited. That or be a pirate. In the meantime she scowled, conscious that her father's attention had been taken away from her, and pointed her gun at Bernice.

Her father deftly pushed her hand upward so the dart stuck in the ceiling. "I know," he said cheerfully, "Why don't you go outside with Scott and play?"

Lucy pouted. "He's a boy!" she complained. "And I don't wanna go outside. There isn't any _snow._ Why do they call it Iceland if there isn't any _snow?"_

"Mmfff-fffmfmfff!" agreed the man in the corner through his gag.

Lucy's father rolled his eyes. "Mr. President," he said, "please be quiet, I'm talking to my daughter."

"Mmmmmffff!" the muffled leader of the free world complained.

Lucy pointed her gun at the man, then looked up at her father when he didn't immediately push her hand back down. When he waved his approval, Lucy pulled the trigger. The president fell over sideways with a thump, and started snoring a second later.

"Very nice, Lucy," her father said. "Now go play outside."

* * *

When Lucy was eight, she'd grown up enough to realize that having a minion was awesome. Minions would do things for you, like make sandwiches! And mixtapes! And Scott, who was now going by Scud, was eager to fill that role.

Also, he agreed with her that "A Little Respect" by Erasure was the best. Song. Ever.

"This is gonna be the best song forever," she proclaimed one day when they'd finished listening to the song several times over on her stereo. She struck a pose, then flopped onto her bed.

"We should listen to it when you're hatching your schemes," he said. He'd been put in charge of the air synthesizers for the song, which was perfect training for helping her rule the world one day. "Like for building lasers and stuff."

"And destroying countries," she said.

Scud frowned at that and scratched the back of his head. "Do we really wanna destroy them? Why not just rule?"

"My dad says everyone in the family has a country they want to destroy," she said, shrugging. "He's gonna get Portugal, grampa almost got Mozambique, mom helped conquer Antigua before those UNCLE agents got to her, and uncle Abner always wanted to destroy Sweden."

"I like Sweden," Scud said.

"Me, too. I don't know why he hates that Nobel guy."

Scud flopped on the bed next to her. "So what country are you gonna destroy?"

"I haven't picked, yet," she said. "Dad says I'll know it when I see it."

"What if you never manage to destroy a country, though?" he pressed. "I mean, there are a lot of countries and not many of them have been destroyed, so your chances aren't actually that great."

Lucy pushed herself up on her arms so she could look down at him. "I'll do it, wait and see," she said. "I'm gonna make my dad proud of me."

* * *

Four very important things happened in 1995. The first was that Lucy turned fourteen, and her father gave her the keys to her very first hovercraft. The second was that the movie Hackers came out, and totally absorbed Scud's brain.

"I finally know what I want to do with my life," he breathed as the ending credits scrolled. They were watching it in the basement of Lucy's house, which had a secret movie theater that served real butter on the popcorn and tazered anyone Lucy thought was making too much noise.

"Can you hook it up to a death ray?" she asked, licking butter off her fingers.

"You can hook a computer up to anything," Scud said, in awe of the psychedelic visions on the screen. "And then you can take over cyberspace without even putting on pants."

The third thing was more of a surprise than it should have been, given the circumstances. She and Scud left the theater, (Scud still in post-movie glow,) got in her hovercraft, and flew out to the beach. The sun was going down over the California coast, and it was warm and romantic as they trooped down the dunes to the shoreline. Scud set out a beach blanket, and settled his arm around her shoulder, and leaned in to kiss her.

She kissed back, because she figured this had been what the evening had been leading up to, right?

It wasn't right. He was being really nice about it, and it wasn't gross or anything, but it just didn't feel right. Maybe it was because you weren't supposed to kiss your minions? Maybe it was because Scud had just spent two hours drooling over that actress--Angelina Jolie?

_Oh, man,_ she thought. _Angelina Jolie. Now she'd be great to kiss--_

"Oh my god!" she said, pulling back.

"What?" he said. "What, do I have popcorn in my teeth? I didn't mean--"

"I think I'm gay!" she exclaimed.

Scud stared at her, then said, "If you don't want me to kiss you, you can just tell me--"

"No, no, Scud, I'm sorry, I just..." she gestured, frantically trying to convey 'breasts' when she wasn't even sure what she meant by that. "I was hypnotized by Kate Libby in the movie tonight!"

"Well, so was I," Scud said. "Wow. What a--" He frowned. "Wait. You can't have a crush on Kate Libby. She's fictional! And if she was real, she'd be mine! Er. If you weren't around."

"Well, I like the actress," Lucy said. "Anyway, that's not the point. It's not your fault. I like girls."

It took her five minutes to convince Scud that there wasn't popcorn in his teeth. Five more minutes to convince him that yes, she was serious about liking girls. Which was good, because that meant over the next ten minutes she became increasingly sure that what she wanted more than anything in the whole world--even more than taking over the world and picking a country to vaporize with darts and a map, which she and Scud had decided was the only fair option--was a girlfriend.

"Well," Scud said when she'd convinced him, "I can't say I'm not disappointed, but I'm your friend, Luce, and I'll be here for you. In the platonic sense."

She sighed in relief. "Thanks, Scud. That means a lot to me."

"So now," he said, clapping his hands together, "I have to use the power of the internet to get you a girlfriend."

"Scud," she said, starting to get worried again.

"No, no," he said, "that's my job as your hacker accomplice. Just relax, leave everything to me, and it'll all be taken care of."

Which was wonderful, until the fourth thing happened.

* * *

"Your father..." Bernice said, sniffling into her handkerchief, "he was glorious to the end. When he realized that he couldn't free himself from the net, he cut me free, then plunged his lightning rod into the side of the zeppelin. As I parasailed away, I could see the glow of electricity flashing through the frame, lighting the balloon from the inside... it was beautiful, in a terrible way." She sniffed again. "I thought I heard his laughter, rolling out over the sound of the explosion..."

Lucy sat still and silent, letting the news wash over her. She'd already taken part in some small way in the feud with the Schaffer clan, but she'd never really believed that it would affect her.

"So what do we do now?" Bernice asked.

Lucy looked at Bernice, startled, then around at her father's other staffers. They were all staring at her.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You're in charge, dear," Bernice said. "Your father left the entire syndicate to you."

Lucy swallowed.

Scud cleared his throat from behind her, then leaned in to murmur, "We've gotta take down the Schaffers."

"Well, obviously," she said, "We have to take down the Schaffers."

Everyone in the room relaxed. So did Lucy--it had been the right thing to say.

"So we're going to kill them?" someone in back said. She quickly identified him as Gus, her father's demolitions man.

"No," she said.

That startled them, but she was pretty sure about this one. She'd never liked the killing people aspect of the job of a crime lord, and she'd been talking with Scud about how to phase that out. She just didn't realize that her own father's death would propel her into this position so soon. She was going to make her dad proud of her, but she was going to do it her way.

"No," she said, firming her resolve. "We're going to _ruin_ them."

* * *

The Schaffers, it turned out, were in the diamond smuggling business.

"Wonderful," Lucy said. "All we have to do is get rid of their diamonds, and they're sunk."

They started out conducting daring raids on the Schaffer ships carrying diamonds from the coast of Africa to their headquarters in Europe. Lucy led a squad of expert thieves in wetsuits to carve their way in through the hull. They escaped into their submarine and reveled in the spoils.

"I thought they'd be, y'know, sparkly," Lucy said as she ran her fingers through the pile of rough gems.

"Most of the cutting and shaping is done in Europe," Scud said.

Lucy nodded. "So we need to go to Europe."

"I'm not sure that--"

"We'll teach them," she said, smiling grimly, "that business with the Schaffers doesn't pay."

Their string of warehouse robberies across Europe was fun, but still mostly focused on uncut stones. Lucy finally vetoed more warehouses when an accident with some mis-set charges caused a rain of diamonds over the eastern Rhine.

"Pretty," she said later.

"Definitely pretty," Scud agreed.

"But impractical."

"Yes indeed."

"We're going after finished stones from now on."

"You're the boss."

It was the diamond explosion that got the attention of the D.E.B.S. Lucy had a stethoscope to a jeweler's vault in Paris when a vision of schoolgirl innocence stepped around a corner and waved a large pistol in her face.

"Hands up," the schoolgirl said, hip rocking to one side and her thigh-length plaid skirt swishing against her bare legs.

Lucy reluctantly dragged her eyes up to the pistol. "Why?" she asked.

"Debs," the girl said, like it was an answer. "We've got this building surrounded. Surrender, and it'll go easier."

It was about that time that Scud stepped out of the shadows and pressed a pistol to the girl's ear. "We've got you surrounded, so..." he said. Then, as she handed her gun over, "Wow, I didn't know the D.E.B.S. would be this hot in person."

She caught the acronym this time. "Scud," she admonished. "Be professional."

"My bad," he said. "You done here, yet?"

Lucy spun the dial one last time and yanked the safe open. "Time to party."

And it totally wasn't her fault that that particular D.E.B. ran into the Schaffers' main munitions storage while holding a live grenade. The resulting explosion took out the D.E.B., the storage dump, and everything else in a 900-foot radius.

"That's a loss," she said to Scud later. "I'm starting to really hate France. Maybe I should destroy France."

"You just hate Parisians," he pointed out. "Besides, you can't destroy France, they've got a good shot at Eurovision this year."

"Good point."

"So where to next?"

Lucy tapped her finger to her lips and stared at her map. "Looks like the next big buyer is in England," she said. "Time for another trip."

* * *

Lucy had been so focused on her mission that she'd forgotten the bigger picture, but in her hotel room in London she was suddenly given a flash of insight, as if from a vengeful God determined to use a lanky adolescent supervilliain as His instrument of smiting.

She had the TV on for background noise, mostly, but she was tracking the dialogue in her head while buckling on straps and adjusting the packets of explosives slung around her waist. As she mulled over the plans, she kept getting distracted by the dialogue--trying to figure out what exactly the people onscreen were talking about, who was talking about whom, and why they were discussing Tasmania.

After a while, she dimly registered that the dialogue was not only confusing, it was being performed in an Australian accent.

Frowning, she turned her head so she could watch as she buckled up her boots. After fifteen minutes, she sat down on the edge of the bed, gnawing on her lower lip, still squinting at the television.

"Okay, Lucy, you ready to--" Scud asked an hour later at V-time, stopping himself and frowning at the screen. "What are you watching?"

"Soap opera," she said, in short bursts so she could follow what was happening onscreen. "Marathon. Australian."

"Oh, hey," Scud said. "I think I heard about this--Neighbours, right? Has some kind of cult following over here?"

"We have to build a death ray," Lucy said.

Scud frowned. "You wanna go D.E.B. hunting?"

"No, Scud, this is bigger than that." Slowly, Lucy stood, stretched, and posed, hands on her hips. "We have to build an orbital death ray, Scud. A big one." As understanding slowly dawned on his face, she smiled. "I'm ready to take up the family legacy."

* * *

Years later, Lucy had failed to destroy Australia.

She sat on the deck of her and Amy's little beach house (a short distance north of Barcelona proper,) watching the waves of the Mediterranean and thinking about how it had all ended up.

"Dad," she said softly, "I don't know if you're out there--I don't know where souls go after being blown up on electrocuted blimps, or even if you managed a daring escape somehow and you're in hiding, watching me from a secret spy satellite!--but I just wanted to let you know... I'm happy."

She smiled to herself, then said, "Yeah, I know it's not as exciting as battling secret agents in the steam tunnels of New York, but let's face it. I didn't really want to wind up gunning down a suave KGB agent or facing a firing squad, or winding up like--what was that one guy? With the ninjas?" She shook her head after a moment. "Yeah, like that. So maybe it's good that I didn't destroy Australia, since otherwise we'd never have Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain, but really, I just fell in love, and that's fantastic."

"So yeah, I made sure the old crew was set up before I took off, and... I bought a house in Barcelona. Well, close to Barcelona. With a mortgage." She chuckled. "It's not your lifestyle, dad. But I'm happy."

"Lucy?" came Amy's voice from the house. "You want anything before I crash?"

"No, I'm good," she called back. "I'll be there in a second, okay?"

"Okay."

Lucy stood up, stretched. Then she looked up into the stars. "One more thing, dad. If you are out there, and you do destroy Portugal? Smoke cloud over the ocean, not this way." She smiled and gave him a little wave, in memory. "Thanks."


End file.
